1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical connector device which allows information transmission by light through a two-dimensional optical waveguide layer between a sending port having a function of sending an optical signal and a receiving port having a function of receiving an optical signal, and to an optical and electrical circuit combined board on which an electrical wiring layer and an optical circuit layer are laid together.
2. Related Background Art
Nowadays, mobile phones and personal information terminals are rapidly becoming widespread, while such equipment has an increasing demand for a further smaller size, lighter weight, and higher performance. However, the smaller size, lighter weight, and higher performance entail an increasingly higher speed and higher packing density of a circuit board, causing an urgent necessity to cope with various problems such as occurrence of a signal delay or electromagnetic interference (EMI, electromagnetic interference noise). Expected as a countermeasure to solve those problems is a technique for optical circuit that is capable of high-speed transmission and has solutions to the signal delay, signal degradation, and the electromagnetic interference noise radiated from wirings, which are problems with conventional electrical circuit.
As an example of using an advantage of the optical circuit, JP 2000-199827 A discloses a device using a mirror tilted by 45° in order to efficiently couple to an optical waveguide an outgoing light or an incident light which are perpendicular thereto.
However, since the device disclosed in JP 2000-199827 A uses a 45° mirror in order to couple light to the optical waveguide and to couple light propagating in the optical waveguide to a light-receiving device, a transmission path becomes a linear path. In the case of forming a plurality of transmission paths, positions of a light-emitting device and the light-receiving device are limited, reducing a degree of freedom in design. That is, the above device does not sufficiently utilize characteristics of the optical waveguide, and lacks flexibility in providing the optical circuit.
Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,219 discloses the following information processing apparatus. That is, U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,219 discloses an information processing apparatus comprising means forming a planar optical waveguide which extends in two dimensions and serves as a shared medium, a plurality of light-emitting means and a plurality of light-detecting means extending in a two dimensional arrangement over said planar optical waveguide for broadcasting light signals and abstracting light signals, respectively, into and from said planar optical waveguide and a plurality of subsystems including input and output ports for processing the light signals in the shared medium, the light-detecting means being coupled to input ports and the light-detecting means being coupled to output ports of the subsystems.
However, the information processing apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,219 does not have sufficient flexibility in providing the optical circuit, either.